The capture of Osama bin Laden has raised many questions in the past couple of days. Do we still need to have troops in Afghanistan? Is Pakistan really our ally? Is that Martin Luther King quote everyone is retweeting really a quote?

But amongst all the questions there’s this: whatever happened to that reward money for capturing Osama, dead or alive?

On Monday, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program removed Osama from its list of wanted terrorist following the official DNA confirmation that he had indeed been killed by U.S. Special Forces. But the question the State Department has yet to answer: what about the $27 million dollar bounty that had been promised for his capture? Who will get that reward?

When a reporter asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the reward money, she said:

“Given the importance of confidentiality to the Rewards for Justice program, I cannot comment at all on whether anyone has been nominated for a reward in this or any other case.”

But U.S. authorities have offered some reason to doubt whether the bin Laden reward will ever leave the bank. That’s because investigators say they pieced together bin Laden’s whereabouts from many different bits of information. Intelligence officials told reporters Monday that no single person is responsible for putting investigators on his trail.

Furthermore the money may not leave the hands of federal authorities because of the red tape in the way:

Investigating agencies within the Pentagon, or at the FBI or CIA, have to nominate tipsters. The nominations go to a special government committee and Clinton must approve them.

Because the tips that led to bin Laden’s capture came from detainees, many of whom were harshly interrogated, odds are the intelligence officials will not be putting those names into the ring for a pay out. I guess it’s like that (real) Ralph Waldo Emerson quote:

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.”

What do you think about the State Department’s handling of the reward money? Should the $27 million dollar reward stay in the bank or should the federal government distribute it out like it promised after the September 11th attacks?